Heavy-metal band “The Polymetallic Nodules” played to protest against deep-sea mining outside Dutch ministerial buildings in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 8th, 2023. | Photo by Charles M Vella / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
When the island nation of Nauru announced that it would sponsor a deep-sea mining effort for battery materials, the country sent scientists and world leaders into a panic. It meant that companies might soon start harvesting minerals like nickel, cobalt, and copper from the ocean’s deepest depths for the first time. Scientists raised the alarm: what havoc would that do to ecosystems that humans are barely starting to understand?
The move set a deadline for the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to decide on regulations for deep-sea mining by July 2023. That deadline to craft regulation is nearly here — and the ISA, an international organization established by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is expected to miss…